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Sunday 25 November 2012

Driven crazy

I’m fine with urban driving.  I can manage the three roundabouts in Cardigan without a second thought, and don’t hesitate with the Tesco’s interchange.  Even the blind turn by the Newport post office doesn’t worry me.  However.  London is quite a lot different to West Wales.  For a start there’s a whole lot more of it, and a whole lot more traffic.  Like, a million times more traffic, ten more lanes in every road, and none of them marked because, of course, all the drivers know exactly where they’re going, ad everyone in London precisely where Chiswick is, in relation to Hammersmith or Richmond.  Except me.  They point this out to me by hooting loudly at every occasion.  They don’t seem to think that stopping in the middle of a one-way system, putting the light on and consulting an atlas is reasonable behaviour.  I don’t understand them at all.
Neither do I understand the people in charge of road signs on the M4.  Okay, driving west from Reading, there’s a single sign, warning of deer for 43 miles.  43.  Not 45.  Not 40 or so, but 43. But coming the other way, from the west, there’s a sign warning of deer for the next 27 miles.  Then, a few miles further on, another sign warning of deer for 10 miles, then, eventually, another warning of deer for the next 12 miles.  Is this because the highways department only had one sheet of extra large Letraset and they used up the only 4 and 3 on the westbound carriageway, so they had to improvise on the east-bound?  And more importantly, how do the deer know when they have reached the limit of the stretch where they are allowed to run out in front of fast-moving traffic.  What happens to a deer who ventures beyond the 43 mile limit?  I think they just had some spare extra large Letraset deer symbols and wanted to use them up.  And they didn’t have any badger symbols.

1 comment:

  1. Just found another good motorway warning sign: gliders for 2¼ miles

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